COMMENTARY:"Donald Trump's ugly attack on The Central Park Five reflects all-too-common attitude," by Lillian Segura, published by The Intercept on October 11, 2016.
GIST: It took no
time at all for anger over Donald Trump’s callous comments about the
Central Park Five to be swept aside by a fresh new wave of revulsion.
Hours after reasserting the guilt of five men wrongfully imprisoned for
rape as teenagers — whom Trump once declared should be executed — the
GOP nominee faced a firestorm over his own boasts of sexual violence. By
the time the presidential debate aired on Sunday night, the controversy
over the Central Park Five had been pushed out of view. This was
disappointing to many racial justice activists, who had hoped Clinton
would use the case to “go on the offensive,” as BuzzFeed
reported, to push back against Trump’s racist “law and order” rhetoric and lay out her own plans for criminal justice reform. But despite the burst of outrage, the ugly truth is that Trump’s
attitude is all too common in district attorneys’ offices around the
country. Not only have prosecutors defended the convictions of innocent
people in the face of exonerating evidence, they will often block
efforts to test for such evidence as DNA in the first place. Once a
conviction is overturned, DAs often refuse to drop charges, dragging out
a legal fight while dangling the specter of re-imprisonment over men
and women who just want to move on with their lives. If a person
is officially exonerated and seeks compensation, it is not uncommon
for DAs to fight these efforts as well. There are important exceptions. On Sunday, amid the chatter about the presidential debate, the shocking
news that
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson had died of cancer met with an
outpouring of grief from exonerees and criminal justice activists over
social media. Thompson, who was just 50 years old, oversaw 10
exonerations in his first year in office, an unthinkable record for an
elected district attorney. He did not stop, doubling that number before
he died. Thompson transformed the lives of men like William Lopez, who spent
23 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Lopez, whom I
wrote about in 2014, had been released by a federal judge who called his case “rotten from day one.” Yet Charles Hynes, Thompson’s predecessor,
refused to drop the charges,
instead taking steps to re-convict him. Lopez lived in fear of
returning to prison, unable to fully to adjust to his new life outside.
His torment subsided thanks to Thompson, who finally dropped the charges
and the appeal, calling it “contrary to the interest of justice.”
Months later, Lopez died of an asthma attack. In a post on Facebook
Sunday night, a friend of Lopez — a fellow exoneree
who helped win his freedom — mourned Thompson, calling him “a champion for the wrongfully convicted. New York has come a long way since the exoneration of the Central
Park Five. It was Hynes, ironically, who first established Brooklyn’s
Conviction Integrity Unit — a model that has caught on in jurisdictions
across the country. Yet even in places where such offices exist, they do
not dissolve prosecutors’ resistance to the notion that the state can
ever get it wrong. When I recently cited the handful of death
row exonerations in California during an interview with an assistant
district attorney in Los Angeles, she questioned whether any of these
people were truly innocent, raising the possibility that “none” of them
were. Those who come to terms with wrongful convictions often do so too
late. Last year, a former Louisiana prosecutor named Marty Stroud
penned an anguished apology to Glenn Ford, an innocent man he sent to death row. The letter caused a stir — the
National Registry of Exonerations called it “uniquely powerful and moving.” Yet Ford was denied compensation from the state and died of cancer months later. Prosecutors are not solely to blame, of course. Governors also deny
justice to the wrongfully convicted. Days before Trump’s
unrepentant remarks about the Central Park Five, his running mate,
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence,
refused to
grant an executive pardon to an Indiana man cleared by DNA evidence of
participating in an armed robbery. After almost 10 years in prison, the
man had waited three more years for a response to his clemency request.
Through his lawyers, Pence said no.
Trump, of course, is a uniquely loathsome character who
happens to be the GOP candidate for president, and whose words have
dominated the news cycle for months. His insistence on the guilt of the
Central Park Five is particularly galling in that it comes not from a DA
defending his conviction, but from a private citizen who viciously
weaponized his wealth against five innocent youths. “Maybe hate is what
we need,” Trump
told Larry King in 1989 when asked about his vigilante publicity blitz. Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, has told the story of
Trump’s vindictiveness for years. In 2005, when New York held hearings
over the possible reinstatement of capital punishment, Salaam reminded
lawmakers of Trump’s full-page 'Bring back the death penalty' ad in the
New York Times, noting that if the billionaire had gotten his way,
Salaam would be dead. (I testified that day too, later getting to know
Salaam through our mutual work with the Campaign to End the Death
Penalty. Trump
is not the only one who loses no sleep over the Central Park Five.
Those most responsible for their conviction have shown a similar lack of
remorse. Former prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who oversaw the false
confessions in the case, opposed the $40 million settlement paid out by
the city in 2014,
reiterating her belief in the five men’s guilt
. In 2002, the year they were exonerated, Fairstein
defended the teenagers’ interrogations to the New Yorker
’s
Jeffrey Toobin. “This was not an Alabama jail where two guys who have
been partners for years put a guy in a back room and he doesn’t see the
light of day for three days,” she said. In a boast that could have come
from Trump himself, she called it “one of the most brilliant police
investigations I’ve ever seen.” Today, Fairstein is a bestselling crime
novelist."
The entire commentary can be found at:
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/donald-trump-ugly-attack-on-central-park-five-reflects-all-too-common-attitude/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty
incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the
harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into
pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology
system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent
stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please
send any comments or information on other cases and issues of
interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy. Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
